_Gram. of E. Gram._,
p. 259. In grammar, a _solitary_ exception or instance can scarcely be a
_true one_.

[367] The following examples may illustrate these points: "These verbs, and
all others _like to_ them, were _like_ TIMAO."--_Dr. Murray's Hist. of
Europ. Lang._, Vol. ii, p. 128. "The old German, and even the modern
German, are much _liker to_ the Visigothic than they are to the dialect of
the Edda."--_Ib._, i, 330. "Proximus finem, _nighest_ the end."--_Ib._, ii,
150. "Let us now come _nearer to_ our own language."--_Dr. Blair's Rhet._,
p. 85. "This looks _very like_ a paradox."--BEATTIE: _Murray's Gram._, Vol.
i, p. 113. "He was _near_ [to] falling."--_Ib._, p. 116. Murray, who puts
_near_ into his list of prepositions, gives this example to show how
"_prepositions become adverbs!_" "There was none ever before _like unto_
it."--_Stone, on Masonry_, p. 5.

"And earthly power doth then show _likest_ God's,
When mercy seasons justice."--_Beauties of Shakspeare_, p. 45.

[368] Wright's notion of this construction is positively absurd and
self-contradictory. In the sentence, "My cane is worth a shilling," he
takes the word _worth_ to be a noun "in _apposition_ to the word
_shilling_." And to prove it so, he puts the sentence successively into
these four forms: "My cane is _worth_ or _value_ for a shilling;"--"The
_worth_ or _value_ of my cane is a shilling;"--"My cane is a _shilling's
worth_;"--"My cane is _the worth of_ a shilling."--_Philosophical Gram._,
p. 150. In all these transmutations, _worth_ is unquestionably a noun; but,
in none of them, is it in apposition with the word _shilling_; and he is
quite mistaken in supposing that they "indispensably prove the word in
question to be a _noun_." There are other authors, who, with equal
confidence, and equal absurdity, call _worth_ a _verb_. For example: "A
noun, which signifies the price, is put in the objective case, without a
preposition; as, 'my book is _worth_ twenty shillings.' _Is worth_ is a
_neuter verb_, and answers to the _latin_ [sic--KTH] verb
_valet_."--_Barrett's Gram._, p. 138. I do not deny that the phrase "_is
worth_" is a just version of the verb _valet_; but this equivalence in
import, is no proof at all that _worth_ is a verb. _Prodest_ is a Latin
verb, which signifies "_is profitable to_;" but who will thence infer, that
_profitable to_ is a verb?

[369] In J. R. Chandler's English Grammar, as published in 1821, the word
_worth_ appe